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Dr. Elzbieta Swietlicki joined the Gastroenterology Division in 1990. She received her MS in pharmaceutical analysis in 1975 and her Ph.D. in toxicology in 1981 from the Medical University in Lodz, Poland, where she worked on the faculty. In 1986 she completed her two year post-doctoral appointment at the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS. She was interested in detoxification reactions, enzymatic indicators of intoxication, essential and toxic metals interactions, and also the role of metallothionein in metal homeostasis.

After moving to the USA she changed her research direction from toxicology to molecular biology. She works in Deborah Rubin`s laboratory on the molecular basis of adaptation after resection of small intestine and on epithelial-mesenchymal interactions in gut epithelial proliferation and carcinogenesis, using mouse and tissue culture models.

Recently, the main focus of Dr. Swietlicki`s research is to investigate the effect of epimorphin, the mesenchymal protein, on intestinal epithelium. The Rubin group has shown that epimorphin has an important role in intestinal morphogenesis, crypt-villus axis formation and tumor formation. These effects are, at least in part, regulated by epimorphin dependent, secreted, soluble factors. Dr. Swietlicki has developed the model of APCmin mice crossed with epimorphin knockout mice to examine the role of epimorphin in tumorgenesis. She also examines changes in pathways essential for intestinal tumor formation in vivo as well as in vitro using isolated mouse myofibroblasts.